Chapter 10 #2
"Disappointing people." I pulled my knees up. Wrapped my arms around them. "I was the kid who cried if I got a B-plus. Not because of the grade. Because of the look on my mother's face."
He was quiet. His hand found the back of the couch behind my head, fingertips just grazing my hair. Not pulling me in. Just there.
"What's your favorite sound?" He asked.
"Maisie's laugh. The big one — the one where she throws her whole body into it, and you think she might tip over." I paused. "And you? Favorite sound?"
"Rain on a tin roof. We had one at my grandmother's house in Hill Country. I used to lie in bed and just listen." I tipped my head back against the couch. His fingers brushed the nape of my neck. Accidental, or not. My skin prickled.
"What do you think about before you fall asleep?"
"Used to think about the next ride. Strategy, the bull's tendencies, where I needed to be. Now I think about the yearlings. The breeding program. What the ranch could become." A pause. His voice dropped. "And you. I think about you."
My breath caught. I turned to look at him. He was already looking at me — steady, unguarded, his face in the lamplight so open it hurt.
"What do you think about?" I asked. Barely above a whisper.
"The hilltop. Your hand on the back of my neck.
The way you laughed when I said your spreadsheet needed work.
" His fingers moved from my neck to my shoulder.
Light. Unhurried. Tracing the ridge of my collarbone through my shirt.
"The way you are with Maisie — how you two laugh together like you've got your own language nobody else speaks.
Like the whole world is just you and her and whatever the joke is. "
"What else?" My voice had dropped to something I barely recognized.
"The freckle right here." His fingertip touched the hollow of my throat and my whole body went warm. He drew a slow line down to my collarbone, and I felt it everywhere — every nerve ending lighting up under that single point of contact.
"I noticed it the first day you walked into the barn, and I've been trying not to stare at it for weeks."
My breath stuttered.
His eyes tracked the movement of my chest, then came back to my face, dark and unhurried and absolutely deliberate.
"Clay." His name came out low. Rough. Almost a warning. Almost not.
"Yeah?" He didn't move his hand. His thumb brushed the curve of my collarbone, back and forth, slow enough to make me dizzy.
I didn't answer. Instead, I shifted — uncurling my legs, turning my body until I was facing him fully. Close. His arm was still along the back behind me, and when I moved, his hand settled on my shoulder — warm, heavy, anchoring.
"Tell me one more thing," I said.
"Anything."
"Are you going to kiss me tonight?"
His hand tightened on my shoulder. A breath. Then, very deliberately, he relaxed it. "No," he said. "Not tonight."
My stomach dropped. Then I saw his face — the restraint in it, the effort, the way his jaw was set like a man holding a line — and I understood. He was giving it to me. The choice. The agency. The thing Preston had never once offered.
"But if you wanted to kiss me," he said. Rough. Almost hoarse. "I wouldn't stop you."
The space between us was six inches. I could feel the heat of his body. Could smell the soap and hay and something underneath that was just him — warm skin, warm man, a scent I'd been collecting without meaning to.
I put my hand on his chest. Felt his heart slamming under my palm. His eyes were dark, his breathing uneven, and he was holding so still — every muscle locked, every instinct leashed — because he'd decided that this one was mine.
I leaned in. Slowly. Giving myself time to stop, because some part of me needed to know I could. That the door was open. That I was choosing to walk through it.
His breath ghosted across my mouth. His hand left my shoulder, both hands dropping to the couch on either side of his thighs — surrendering the contact, making himself open, giving me all the control.
I kissed him.
Not careful. Not tentative. I kissed him with two years of locked doors behind me and his heartbeat under my hand. My fingers slid from his chest to the back of his neck, and I pulled him into me. He made a sound against my mouth that was broken and grateful, and it sent electricity down my spine.
I pulled back. His eyes were closed. His chest was heaving.
"You can — you can touch me."
His eyes opened. Dark. Searching. "You sure?"
"I'm sure."
His hands came up — careful, shaking, like he was afraid of breaking something — and cupped my face. His thumbs brushed my cheekbones. He held me like I was made of something precious and looked at me with an expression that stripped me bare.
"Tell me what you want," he said. "No wrong answer."
"You." It came out steadier than I expected. "Take me to bed, Clay."
He stood. Pulled me up with him. And instead of scooping me up, he laced his fingers through mine.
Held my hand. Walked me down the hall past Maisie's door like we had all the time in the world, because he understood that what I needed wasn't to be carried.
It was to walk there on my own legs, holding on to someone I chose.
He stopped at the foot of my bed and turned to me. His hand came up to my face, and he tucked the hair behind my ear the way he'd done in the kitchen, only this time his fingers trailed down — jaw, collarbone, the slope of my shoulder — and I shivered.
"We go slow," he said. "And you tell me if you want to stop. Any second. Any reason."
"Okay."
"Promise me."
"I promise."
I reached for the hem of his shirt. Lifted it. He raised his arms and let me pull it over his head and —
Oh.
Broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist. Muscles carved by years of being thrown and getting back up, not built in a gym but earned — every ridge, every line written by something real.
Scars were scattered across his ribs and one long one curving over his hip, and I wanted to trace every single one with my mouth.
His skin was warm and golden, and when I put my palm flat against his chest, I felt his heart pounding against my hand, hard and fast, and the fact that I did that to him — that this man who looked like that was shaking under my touch — made my head swim.
I spread my fingers. Let my hand slide down slowly over the ridges of his stomach and watched the muscles clench under my palm. Watched his jaw tighten. Watched his breath stop. My eyes followed the V of muscle that cut low beneath his waistband, and my mouth went dry.
He was careful. He was devastating. He paid attention to every breath, every shiver, every sound like he'd been studying the language of my body and intended to become fluent.
When I reached for him — to give back, to reciprocate, to do the thing I'd been trained to believe was required — he caught my hands.
Brought them to his mouth. Kissed my knuckles.
"No," he said. Gentle. Firm. "This one's yours. Just yours."
"But you —"
"Callie." He pressed his lips to my palm. "Let me."
So I let him.
He reached for my belt, fingers skimming my stomach as he went. My breath came out shaky and fast. Every nerve ending in my body attuned to his next move. He pulled it through the loops slowly, thoughtfully. The way he’d done everything else. His eyes held mine as it hit the floor with a thud.
And then he sank to his knees.
I wasn’t sure how I was still standing with a man as beautiful as Clay Blackwood kneeling in front of me, undressing me with a kind of reverence that could only be considered devotion.
My pants hit the floor next, and then his hands curled in the waistband of my panties. “Are you sure?” The words scraped out of him, raw and desperate.
“Yes,” I whispered. “Yes,” I repeated, stronger. “Please, Clay. Touch me.”
“Fuck,” he rasped and dragged my panties to the floor. “Take your shirt off. Let me see you.”
I was panting by the time I was completely undressed. Shaking under his stare. He sank back onto his haunches, just looking. “Well?” I finally asked.
“Well —” he swallowed hard. Then his eyes met mine. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, Callie Monroe.”
And I felt it. I felt it with every word, every look, every kind gesture he’d given these last few weeks I’d known him.
I sucked in a slow breath when his lips landed on my thigh. His hands slid up the back of my calves, holding me to him while he trailed open-mouthed kisses higher and higher. I sank a hand in his hair, fisting it at the root when his head settled between my legs.
“Clay,” I breathed, swaying as he tasted me. My eyes fluttered shut. My chest heaved. He was so gentle, but nothing about the sound that left him was gentle. It was raw, hungry — one of my new favorite sounds.
His grip on my legs tightened before he grabbed one and threw it over his shoulder, opening me up to him more.
“Oh God,” I cried out when he sucked on my clit.
He looked up at me then, lips glistening, eyes wild. “You gotta stay quiet for me, baby. Can you do that?”
I nodded quickly, my head swimming. I reached for him, pulling him to his feet as I fell back onto my bed. “More,” I demanded, voice hoarse. “I need more.”
Clay settled on top of me, his skin warm and soft against mine. His weight heavy and perfect on top of me. I kissed him hard, frantic. I reached between us for his jeans, but he grabbed my hand before I could pop the button. “Not tonight,” he said, breathing hard.
My eyes met his. “You don’t want me?”
He laughed. “Callie, I’ve wanted you since the moment I laid eyes on you. I don’t think I’ve been harder in my life.” I could feel the outline of him pressing between my legs, and it only made me want him more.
He slid a hand between us, cupping me. A shaky breath stuttered out of me at the possessiveness of it. “But I just want to take care of you tonight.” His fingers moved slow and hard on my clit, sending waves of pleasure rolling through me. “Want to make you feel good.”
I let him take care of me the way he'd taken care of my whole catastrophic evening. I let him show me what it felt like when someone touched you without keeping score. Without expecting something back. Without the transaction I'd learned to brace for.
I came apart under his hands, and the sound I made was raw and startled and half his name.
He held me through it. Through the aftershocks and the shaking and the tears that came without permission — not sadness, something bigger and older. Relief. The kind you don't expect because you didn't know how much weight you'd been carrying until someone lifted it.
"I forgot," I whispered. Against his chest. Into the dark. "I forgot it could feel like that."
He pulled me closer. Pressed his mouth to my hair. "Then let me keep reminding you."
We lay there in the dark. His fingers traced lazy circles on my back — unhurried, aimless, the touch of a man who had nowhere else to be. The fridge hummed. Down the hall, Maisie's nightlight cast a thin sliver of purple under her door.
"Your chicken was good," I said. Because apparently, after the most emotionally devastating evening of my adult life, my brain's contribution was a culinary review.
"I'll make it again."
"The green beans needed garlic."
"It was onion powder, wasn't it."
"It was onion powder."
He laughed. Low and warm, the kind that vibrates through someone else's body when you're pressed against them. I felt it in my ribs. In parts of me that had been numb for so long, I'd forgotten they could feel anything at all.
I fell asleep against him. First time in two years I fell asleep thinking that maybe I'd already found what I needed to survive tomorrow.